Ars Technica System Guide: Bargain Box, February 2013

Build a cheap rig for your home office or an HTPC with our recommended hardware.

Since the early 2000s, the Ars System Guides have been helping DIYers to become system-building tweakmeisters. This series is a resource for building computers to match any combination of budget and purpose.

The Bargain Box (formerly the Ultimate Budget Box) is the most basic box we cover in the System Guides. It's neither top of the line nor extremely cutting edge, but as the lowest-price box in the guides, it has a lot of competition today. Originally, the bargain box just went up against OEM pre-builts, then netbooks vied for the same market, and now tablets compete for the dollars of bargain desktop users.

Still, there is room for basic desktop systems in an office setting, where employees work spreadsheets and stream training videos, and at home, where users might need to store more movies, photos, and music than they could on the (relatively) limited storage of the average tablet or cell phone. 64GB or even 128GB of flash storage can get filled up quickly, meaning a place for a few hundred gigabytes of cheap storage is handy. Despite similarly priced alternative form factors, bargain desktops still belong in a home office, or even as the core of a low-budget HTPC.

There's no pretense of other needs in the Bargain Box. It gets a reasonable amount of storage despite its low cost, and there's no attempt at 3D ability outside the basic level of performance found in the integrated graphics (IGP). It's there to do the basic tasks with minimum fuss.

Why not Dell?

We addressed this in the April 2012 Bargain Box article, and little has changed: for the lowest-cost desktop possible, buying an OEM box makes more sense. As we wrote a year ago:

Big OEMs like Dell, HP, Toshiba, Lenovo, and others all get volume discounts and economies of scale that the individual builder or even smaller OEMs can't match. This holds particularly true with software. Paying for the OS is a big chunk of change in systems like these, and it's something that will significantly affect any builder.

The Bargain Box is probably more useful to such buyers (and potential builders) as a reference on what specs their pre-built system should meet.

For the enthusiast who insists on building his or her own box, though, a pre-built box isn't a choice. Building it yourself, even a bargain system, is a must. The Bargain Box is aimed at them. When even a stripped-down Budget Box is too much, the Bargain Box is designed to provide an even lower-spec'd price point.

We do try to emphasize a few things we think are worth the money, particularly higher-efficiency power supplies (PSU) than are typically found in bargain-basement boxes. These features may not be critical, but if you're building it yourself, they are nice things to consider for relatively minimal cost, and are important differentiators compared to the big OEM prebuilts.

Bargain Box fundamentals

The basic tasks the Bargain Box are aimed at means the setup is very minimal compared to the majority of the boxes in the rest of the System Guides. As the lowest-cost setup in the System Guides, it's priced below the Budget Box, sacrificing any pretense of gaming ability and instead focusing only on competence at the most basic tasks.

We wanted to build the best box for the least amount of money, but like last year's Bargain Box, after balancing processing power and storage we allowed two slight indulgences over the absolute-lowest-cost: USB 3.0 and a decent, high-efficiency power supply. The setup permits enough storage to keep all that media, and enough processing power to make it worth using. The high-efficiency power supply helps save money in the long run and keeps your A/C load light in the summer.

The target is sub-$500 (without OS) for the Bargain Box, including monitor, mouse, and keyboard. Aiming even lower is possible for many, and while that gets almost competitive with OEM boxes, the cost of the operating system still tilts it in favor of the OEM pre-built. Continued progress means less than $400 may be possible, but we don't want to cut too many corners.

Final note: choosing an OS

Unfortunately, the operating system will make a large dent in a sub-$500 box. Windows 7 Home Premium or Windows 8 Pro is easily 15 to 25 percent of the budget. Choosing an open-source OS such as Linux Mint or Ubuntu might be right for some, but those OSes still lack the traction (and the polish) on the consumer desktop that Windows has.

Windows often wins out simply because it's prevalent and so many users are familiar with it. In business circles it's almost unavoidable, so non-Windows operating systems are rarely an attractive option, especially if non-geeks will be using the desktop.

For those who want to try Linux, don't forget to look outside the mainstream full-on distros and into others, such as XFCE and Enlightenment desktop environments. There are also specific ones for specific uses (should your needs match up), like the media center focused XBMC.

The Bargain Box

As we did last spring, this year we cover two versions, one powered by AMD and one powered by Intel. Each has strengths and weaknesses: better CPU performance with Intel, better graphics performance with AMD.

We also discuss alternative components in the detailed recommendations. The Bargain Box is one system where additional features for a few bucks more might really break the budget for many, but specific upgrades might greatly enhance the utility of the Bargain Box beyond the most basic intentions of the guide.

Powered by Intel

Powered by AMD

Differences in performance between the processor and graphics are very real, but performance in the grand scheme of things is nevertheless limited. Still, the differences might matter more to specific user types, so we discuss both.

Processor

AMD version: AMD A4-5300 retail

Intel version: Intel Celeron G1610 retail

Reviews on the budget models of Intel's Ivy Bridge architecture and AMD's Trinity architecture are a bit scarce. A few bits of info on PassMark show that the G1610 is substantially faster than the A4-5300, but the results of a single benchmark provide only a very narrow view of actual performance. The higher-end versions of bothchips are well reviewed, but performance benchmarking and scaling are imperfect at best, so it's hard to say.

We feel reasonably confident, though, that the Intel Celeron G1610 (dual-core, 2.6ghz, 55W TDP) is probably going to be a fair bit faster than the AMD A4-5300 (dual-core, 3.4ghz, 65W TDP) for most day-to-day tasks. AMD has made strides in power consumption recently, but Intel is likely to maintain the lead here, especially at full load.

3D graphics-wise, AMD should be faster, which may be a consideration for some—although the IGPs in any processor in this price range are going to be far too slow for serious gaming. AMD also seems to have done a better job with custom frequencies for home theater PC-type (HTPC) use, if the builder should want this Bargain Box to end up as the core of a HTPC rig.

Slower CPU options are available from both companies, but we would recommend avoiding them. No available option saves a significant amount of money, especially given how bad the performance hit would be. Single-core Celeron parts, AMD E-series APUs, or the worst of the lot, Intel Atom processors, all start to get downright ugly in performance. An older article from Xbitlabs provides a useful comparison between a Sandy Bridge-based dual-core Celeron, AMD E-350, and Intel Atom dual-core for the curious.

Faster CPUs, such as the marginally faster Intel Celeron G1620 probably aren't enough of an upgrade to be worthwhile. A bigger bump, such as the AMD A6-5400, Intel Pentium G645, or Intel Pentium G2020 may be within reach for some, but the actual performance benefits vs. the intended use case should be carefully considered before spending too much more money.

my HTPC is a refurbished HP DX-5150 [$99 micro center]Ubuntu/VLC and flat black spray to most of the facehttp://forums.nas4free.org/download/file.php?id=386streams of those pesky .mkv files are just finequiet fans too.my son's contribution a wireless KB with too much lag for gamesfrom my spares a better optical drive, a wireless mouse,audio, and a DVI to HDMI cables

Many - if not most - people building a budget PC from parts will already have a home network, so storage and a DVD are less of an issue. I'd always prefer an SSD over spinning disks for a machine with access to network based storage.

For speakers, we have no specific recommendation. Allocating a few bucks gets some speakers that will produce recognizable sounds, but not too much beyond that.

I have a recommendation. For the love of god, do not buy USB speakers!

I foolishly bought my parents a pair of Logitech S150 USB speakers as they were cheap, small and looked good (a priority for my mother). Setup was simple and as they were powered by USB, whenever you turned the computer off, they powered off too - which was nice.

However (and it's a big one), there were no drivers so you had to use the Windows standard driver. This appeared to be only able to put out sounds at one of two volumes - completely silent or ear splittingly loud. A Google search shows this is a common occurrence with many USB speakers.

It is possible to achieve a partial middle ground if you set the master volume to maximum and then every single application to a level just above 0 - but with a large number of applications, volumes on a per user basis and the fact that any new application launched gets full volume (and blows your eardrums out), this was a complete pain to manage. Not to mention that it only really gave you an additional sound level.

In summary, always buy speakers that get their input from a standard connector and never USB. I've got a pair of Creative A35's and whilst they aren't amazing, they do the job, they are cheap and I can at least actually control the volume.

My only complaints here is the very non-htpc looking case for a htpc, and lack of card reader.

Personally, I'd get a htpc looking case with 275-500W power supply for about $50-60 (plenty of them on new egg, like HEC 7K09BBA30FNRX or APEX DM-318), and pick up a internal (3.5" bay) card reader with usb 3.0 port on it. Like the Rosewill RDCR-11003.

With the Apex case and rosewill, you are no more expensive than the proposed setup. With the HEC option it's about $10 more.

For speakers, we have no specific recommendation. Allocating a few bucks gets some speakers that will produce recognizable sounds, but not too much beyond that.

I have a recommendation. For the love of god, do not buy USB speakers!

I foolishly bought my parents a pair of Logitech S150 USB speakers as they were cheap, small and looked good (a priority for my mother). Setup was simple and as they were powered by USB, whenever you turned the computer off, they powered off too - which was nice.

However (and it's a big one), there were no drivers so you had to use the Windows standard driver. This appeared to be only able to put out sounds at one of two volumes - completely silent or ear splittingly loud. A Google search shows this is a common occurrence with many USB speakers.

It is possible to achieve a partial middle ground if you set the master volume to maximum and then every single application to a level just above 0 - but with a large number of applications, volumes on a per user basis and the fact that any new application launched gets full volume (and blows your eardrums out), this was a complete pain to manage. Not to mention that it only really gave you an additional sound level.

In summary, always buy speakers that get their input from a standard connector and never USB. I've got a pair of Creative A35's and whilst they aren't amazing, they do the job, they are cheap and I can at least actually control the volume.

Odd, I've bought a couple dozen varieties of USB speakers and never had this sort of issue. Windows volume control always works fine for the speakers. Sometimes the speakers even have volume button on them that hooks into the windows volume level.

We mainly get these for people doing presentations on the road. They don't require power (other then from the laptops USB port) so the whole thing is portable.

Dell actually had a nice cheap set too that drew power from USB, but got audio over the normal connector.

Suprised that a recommended upgrade isn't some sort of caching SSD setup to get the best performance out of that spinning HD.

SRT isn't supported on that particular chipset and it's a little annoying to get working.

That's annoying. IMO, right now SSD is the best upgrade any system can get, even ones that are several years old. Caching SSDs get you about most of the way there while still retaining capacity benefits of HDs.

Excellent article. Shame though... I just recently built a rig for a family member this past weekend, and it was to be a bargain box but it was about 500$-520$ with no taxes. However, it was considerably superiour to the ones in this article, I'm wondering if I didn't go a bit overboard...

You could do a fair bit with this, including the low to mid level graphic intensive games. It also leaves a lot of room for expansion, seeing as the mobo is quite advanced for the majority of the build.

Bottom line, I think I failed to stay within the bargain box mindset... be careful everyone. haha

I'd like to see one of these on cheap home server set-ups. Borrow a monitor from another computer for set-up, ability to run a VPN while I'm at coffee shops desiring security, and an eye toward storage expansion capabilities if I end up using it as a home media server. I'd imagine that a Pi or something of the sort could work at sufficient speeds such that the network is still the bottleneck.

I've gotta point out that high quality 120/128GB SSD's are routinely on sale for $80. Just sayin' that if you don't need the extra drive capacity, spending an additional $20 on an SSD is going to be the best investment you can make.

On the rare occasion i need to build a cheap as possible pc, i find that i can usually get a better PC for the same price with a little patience. Knowing where and when to shop to buy things on sale has usually netted me a better PC than the price point would normally allow. I find mid range performance comparisons a better reference. MaximumPC usually does a pretty god job at that.

For HTPC, if you care about putting it in your home enterntainment center

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6811112186(if you can find this).You also want the SSD+HDD combo if you are serious about fast start/shutdown for your HTPC (even utilizing "sleep" as "off").A small 60GB SSD + 2 TB WD Green is what my HTPC utilizes, i have on average 2-3 second power up time and 2-3 second power down (into sleep) cycle, faster than most set top players. Even full shutdown/restart takes less than 10 seconds. (Win 7 Media Center).Again if you care about silent HTPC you will need to replace the CPU fan, as well as the Video Card fan if you are really serious. (A bit tricky with Video card fan on my GT430). For basic HTPC you can utilize Intel CPU Video but it wont give you some advanced stuff (like 24p, etc).

I am very reluctant to recommend Enlightenment to a novice LINUX user, and as an experienced LINUX user I personally find it unbearable for day-to-day work. XFCE, on the other hand, is quite excellent.

With the prices of components these days, I find it incredibly difficulty to stay within a budget category, only because you can make boxes so much more powerful for a small cost increase. For an additional $150-250 dollars, you could add on so much extra (necessary?) number crunching power.

Then I remember, that's not the game we're playing here, and this game can be a fun one. We're trying to maximize performance with a strict budget. It is incredibly satisfying when you build one of these boxes; OCD to the max on the specs of each component, then many hours comparing them, obsessing over every con or DOA in the reviews, then the thought to maybe shift money to another part of the system that you think could give it an edge. I've never built or worked on a mission critical system, but I imagine its a similar feeling to building one of these super low cost high performance boxes, under budget.

It would be nice to see an article "The Bargain Box 2 years later". Or an article where you we keep the Case, HDD, DVD, etc and only upgrade the CPU, MB and RAM. Some people who followed your advice, or built their own systems may have several components they can scavenge, and spend the money on a budget upgrade. At least that is my case.

I am utterly confused that intel STILL makes the Celeron and the Pentium. I thought they retired these brands many many years ago. OK, Celeron = value, what does Pentium = ?, bearing in mind that intel used it as their premium brand?

Did a quick search & like Ars I didn't find much out there on the current Celeron / Pentium products. Also the lineup numbering is bloody confusing.

No budget for a SDD huh? Wonder if Apple's incredible Fusion drive will ever come to Windows or Linux?

Mate a cheap 32gb SSD with a cheap 320gb HDD in tiered storage Fusion-like mode & you'd have something that blows away almost any non SSD computer while having more single-volume speedy storage than most all-SSD computers, and still stick to Bargain box prices (probably )

Suprised that a recommended upgrade isn't some sort of caching SSD setup to get the best performance out of that spinning HD.

SRT isn't supported on that particular chipset and it's a little annoying to get working.

That's annoying. IMO, right now SSD is the best upgrade any system can get, even ones that are several years old. Caching SSDs get you about most of the way there while still retaining capacity benefits of HDs.

It came down to cost. As was stated on the third page (I think) of the article, its easy to get in the "for only a few bucks more I can get...." I believe the goal of the build was to keep it below $500. If you want to cut a corner somewhere else, or can get the SSD on a sale, go for it!

Suprised that a recommended upgrade isn't some sort of caching SSD setup to get the best performance out of that spinning HD.

SRT isn't supported on that particular chipset and it's a little annoying to get working.

That's annoying. IMO, right now SSD is the best upgrade any system can get, even ones that are several years old. Caching SSDs get you about most of the way there while still retaining capacity benefits of HDs.

It came down to cost. As was stated on the third page (I think) of the article, its easy to get in the "for only a few bucks more I can get...." I believe the goal of the build was to keep it below $500. If you want to cut a corner somewhere else, or can get the SSD on a sale, go for it!

True, but I'd be looking for motherboards with that capability vice ones that don't. And the mSATA SSDs are in the tens of dollars range.

I am utterly confused that intel STILL makes the Celeron and the Pentium. I thought they retired these brands many many years ago. OK, Celeron = value, what does Pentium = ?, bearing in mind that intel used it as their premium brand?

Wow, I did also think they had retired the Pentium brand. Looking at the Intel website, Core is the "core" brand, and Pentium and Celeron are the "value" brands.

I am really surprised they are reusing Pentium after the Pentium 4 debacle. Retaining the Celeron brand makes sense because I don't think it ever generated any ill feelings, and for a period of time, during AMD's lowest points, was actually one of the best bang for the buck processors you could buy.

Only saves $10 off the build in this instance, but I got mine on sale for $65, which was unbeatable at the time. I like it because it's well-suited for horizontal orientation, sits under one of our smaller tv's.

The article subline mentions an HTPC, but it's really just a bargain desktop. You could use it as an HTPC, but there are better options out there if that's your focus.

Edit: The 'going smaller' section does mention some other cases: In-Win BP655 looks nice. Still, budget HTPC builds are worthy of their own guides.

Many - if not most - people building a budget PC from parts will already have a home network, so storage and a DVD are less of an issue.

Was going to post this same type of comment. My "new" PCs almost always consist of a new motherboard, cpu, harddrive, and ram (or some combination of those things). Most everything else I use is either components I've cleaned up and recycled from my last PC or else components that I purchased on sale on the cheap when I've found a price that was too good to pass up and I was reasonably sure it was a component that wouldn't soon be obsolete.

Why is the cost of the OS a factor for most builders? Unless you don't have a computer already or are looking to switch to a different OS, can't you just use your existing keys?

I guess it depends whether or not you are replacing a computer and (if so) what sort of license you have.

If you are building a second computer but only bought one Windows license, you can't just install it on another machine. If you are replacing an OEM PC, chances are it didn't come with a full install disc (they usually come with recovery partitions or custom image DVDs).

Granted this is just for Windows but if you're installing Linux it wouldn't matter and if you are using a modified OSX, you're already OK with ignoring the license specifics.

Many - if not most - people building a budget PC from parts will already have a home network, so storage and a DVD are less of an issue.

Was going to post this same type of comment. My "new" PCs almost always consist of a new motherboard, cpu, harddrive, and ram (or some combination of those things). Most everything else I use is either components I've cleaned up and recycled from my last PC or else components that I purchased on sale on the cheap when I've found a price that was too good to pass up and I was reasonably sure it was a component that wouldn't soon be obsolete.

I think it's just easier to include these things in case you need them, easy enough to subtract them from your list if you don't need them. That said, most build guides don't bother with monitor/keyboard/mouse.

I really wouldn't recommend AMD APUs for Linux. You'll have to use the proprietary drivers and they don't work very well for most of the time, unless you're using them for some specific tasks, e.g., opencl, but in that case you'll go with something better no matter what.

Anyway, Linux and AMD graphics is still a no-no for the regular user. Just go with Intel and you;ll be fine.